


Tough Luck, Chuck

by PoorWendy



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Confessions, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Intoxication, Mal-as-she-was, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 04:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11410212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorWendy/pseuds/PoorWendy
Summary: It isn’t as if Mallorie Miles isn’t used to being stared at.It happens a lot. She used to pretend that it didn’t. Then one day she realized that she was pretty well able to instill fear in any starer just by flashing her eyes back their way.Until today, it seems.





	Tough Luck, Chuck

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally an extra for Inception Bingo during Inceptiversary 2016. Then I missed the deadline and let it fester on my drive for almost an entire year. Better late than never! The line of tropes was: Intoxication + Confessions + Fake Relationship

It isn’t as if Mallorie Miles isn’t used to being stared at.

It happens a lot. She used to pretend that it didn’t. Then one day she realized that she was pretty well able to instill fear in any starer just by flashing her eyes back their way.

Until today, it seems. She passes the man on a bridge and catches him staring, so she glares back his way. It’s a look that isn’t necessarily _meant_ to be menacing, even though she knows by now that’s what everybody else sees.

But ultimately, she’s left cocking a curious eyebrow at the utter lack of fear on his stupid, handsome face. It’s as if he volleyed the contents of her knowing glare right back at her. Maybe he’s faking the confidence—the self-assuredness—or maybe he’s really that cocky. She has to admit to herself straightaway that, real or fake, it’s… _endearing_.

She dreams of his face that night. She dreams she’s on a beach, building sandcastles, and suddenly the sun is out of her eyes, and her palace is drenched in shadow, and she looks up to see his head blocking out the sun, and in spite of how foggy and dark his visage is, she can make out that same expression, the one that says, “Yes, of _course_ you’re terrifying, but I’m still looking, aren’t I?”

 

\---

 

She thinks of him on and off for days. She doesn’t know his name, or anything about him.

Until she visits her father at the college a week later.

Mallorie is all set to walk clear past Miles’ office, as he’s never there. When she passes by, her eyes drift to the glass pane in the door, expecting to see the same dusty stack of books and journals on the same old, unused desk. Instead, she sees _him_.

Not her father, but the _man_ , the one from the bridge, and the beach in her dreams.

She stands dumbstruck for just a few seconds, then prepares herself for when he’ll inevitably look up. She’s perfecting a twisted little smirk, entirely for his benefit, as he pulls a stiff, long-untouched volume from one of the shelves and dusts it off with his hand.

Now she’s getting a little frustrated, waiting here, smirking, while this guy opens the cover, sneezes, decides better of it, and puts the book back in its place on the shelf. He’s nearly facing her; he’d see her if he’d just _look_.

Some deep, desperate part of her wants to tap on the glass, to demand his attention, but instead, she gathers herself and continues down the hall.

 

\---

 

“His name is Dominic Cobb,” her father tells her as they sit in the cafe. “He was a student of mine.”

“And now he works on your little project?” she asks, maybe spitefully. Miles has been wrapped up in some “project” the past couple years. Mallorie doesn’t know anything about it, save that it apparently _does_ include architecture, though for how surreptitiously he always acts in regard to it, she remains doubtful of that fact.

Miles nods. “What has you so interested?”

“Nothing,” she replies, picking at her croissant. To probably anybody else in the world, this response might have been passable.

But Miles can see right through her. He gives her a knowing look, but only says, “He’ll be there on Saturday.”

Mallorie raises an eyebrow inquisitively. “Saturday?”

Her father sighs through his smile. “The banquet,” he reminds her.

She squints her eyes shut tightly as she recalls. “The banquet,” she echoes him again. “I shouldn’t have forgotten; I think I have it written down somewhere,” she mumbles hastily.

“It’s alright,” her father says, and his face gives away none of the disappointment she’s sure he must feel at her having forgotten. “Do you think you’ll be able to make it?”

She nods. “Absolutely,” she says, and takes a tentative first sip of her hot coffee. If being there for her father hadn’t sold her itself—and it would have—the low rumblings of disappointment that she hadn’t caught this Dominic’s eye again make her decision obvious. “I will be there.”

She looks up at her father. He laughs at her, the way he has since she was five years old. The way she loves.

 

\---

 

The banquet is elegant, but not overly stuffy. It’s held in one of the older halls on the campus. She’s too ashamed to tell her father that she’d forgotten the so-called purpose of this one until she’d arrived. She’s been to so many of these events at the college at her father’s invitation. Banquets, galas, dinners, benefits. They blur together after so many, each with its own ostensible purpose.

But Mallorie knows the real goal around here these days: to cull students, vet them and see if they’re cut out for whatever it is that Miles is always vetting them for.

Rather than poke and prod like she’s sometimes wont to do, she troubles the bartender for gin and tonic after gin and tonic. With extra limes. And extra gin.

She sits at the bar, watching everyone. She especially admires her mother, charming everyone that Miles encounters, colleagues and students and superiors alike. Her mother sips her sea breeze and smiles her radiant smile—the one that matches her pearls so well, the one that would make you swear the only reason oysters ever evolved in the first place was so this woman could wear pearls and smile.

She hasn’t spoken to her mother tonight. Not yet. The older Mallorie gets, the stranger their relationship becomes. It isn’t “strained.” No, Mallorie doesn’t like to think of it as “strained.” In fact, when Mallorie goes over to her parents’ house to sit and have coffee with her mother, to chat and listen to the radio and maybe help her cook, they get along famously. They laugh and joke, they share, slouching at the table happily, wearing blue jeans and sweaters.  
  
It’s only when they’re out together, like this, that Mallorie feels the unsettling feeling that she's come to think of as _the great shift_. It’s something about the way she behaves, Mallorie thinks. Her mother is a perfect lady, which isn’t to say she isn’t opinionated, and angry, and vehement, because she is. But out in a crowd, dressed so sweetly, dripping with pearls, it just isn’t her way. She plays the part of the lady so well, and Mallorie thinks she’s beautiful, and Mallorie thinks she’s _divine_ , but Mallorie hasn’t been able to stand playing that part since she was fourteen years old. If she’s going to be out, she’d like to have a good time. So she gives her mother and father both a wide berth. 

She sips on her drinks. She sits. She watches.

Mallorie casts her eyes at Dominic repeatedly, but he never meets them. She keeps her cool on the surface, but inside she’s shouting at him in her mother’s French to “Just _look_ at me, you bastard!”

But he won’t. He didn’t when she visited Miles again yesterday, and he even got away with looking just past her when Miles introduced them earlier tonight, even as he shook her hand.

She hopes against hope that it isn’t what she feels is the most obvious explanation: he’s avoiding her simply because she’s Miles’ daughter. Because that would truly be infuriating. Because normally Mallorie would have _no patience at all_ for the kind of man who would treat her that way, as though she were her father’s property. But a quiet, tentative voice somewhere inside her head keeps insisting it must be something else… So, she sits, and fumes, and wills silently.

 

\---

 

After another hour, some grad student comes sniffing around. 

“Oh, this just isn’t right,” he says, stepping up beside her. American, she notes. She’s bored with him already, but she offers one barely-raised eyebrow to let him finish whatever horrible line he’s going with here. “A beautiful woman like you, drinking all alone?”

She rolls her eyes gently and turns back to her drink. “I’m alone because I want to be; I hope it doesn’t disappoint you.”

He seems to mistake her for someone who can be worn down, and tries again. He clutches his chest and feigns a look of great pain. “And that _accent!_ Please, just have one drink with me. Better than being alone, right?”

She’s given the guy one graceful response.

It’s not her fault he didn’t take the out.

She closes her eyes, draws in breath, and slowly turns, fully prepared to unhinge her jaw and swallow this guy whole, when she notices Dominic passing by.

A window. An opportunity.

She barely thinks; she grabs him by the wrist and takes half-a-second to delight at the surprise on his face.

“Dominic,” she purrs, drawing him closer, “would you kindly tell this gentleman that I am spoken for?”

“Oh,” Dominic begins, startlingly willing and prepared to play this role, “god, take her, _please_.”

She shoves him. “He’s teasing, of course,” Mallorie explains to the grad student who's now eyeing them suspiciously.

“You said you wanted to be alone,” he says, like it’s something worth saying. There’s a wild woman inside of her trying to claw her way out and _gut_ this guy for needing such convincing that he should leave her alone, but there’s also a fair amount of gin inside her.

Dominic puts his arm around her then, and pulls her closer. “Sorry, dude,” he says to the guy, and Mallorie nearly snorts. “Finders-keepers.” He guides her off in another direction, and she lets herself laugh into his shoulder.

 

\---

 

At first, she really thought it would be as easy as that—grab Dominic, slough off creep, proceed to drink and dance all night. But the grad-student (whose name, they learn, is Chuck, thanks to his very loud friends) isn’t so easily deterred. He lingers relatively nearby for at least an hour with a very critical look on his face, like suddenly he’s going to _catch_ them, and then he’ll miraculously get Mal all to himself. At first, making the hopeless pursuer squirm just by hanging on Dominic’s arm is enough for her. But then, she _has_ been thinking about Dominic so much lately. He _has_ had disproportionate ownership of her thoughts for quite a while, so why not use all this as an opportunity to wheedle in?

“Oh, Dominic,” she coos as a waiter passes them with a tray of hors d’evours. “Quiche! Your favorite.”

She can see the barest trace of a plea in his eyes. She can practically hear him saying, _Please, not quiche_.

She takes two off the tray and pops one into her mouth. “Oh, and it’s the best I’ve ever tasted,” she goes on while she chews. “You _must_ , Dominic…”

The look on his face is nothing short of distraught as she wedges the little crusted dish into his mouth. He relents. He opens, he shuts, he chews, he swallows, and though his eyes positively _water_ , he smiles. “Oh, you’re right, babe. _Much_ better than your mother’s recipe,” he offers with a smirk.

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and sets forward her most ruthless glare. “Always with my mother! The woman is _French_. I think she knows what she’s doing!”

Dominic pokes her on the nose. “Aw, Mal. So fiery!”

She wrinkles her nose and huffs near-silent laughter through it. She notices Chuck glaring from his table, so she turns back to Dominic quickly, keeping up her feigned irritation. She berates him in rapid French, and it sets him to laughing so quickly that he has to cover his mouth with his hand.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he says, once he’s regained his composure. Then he offers her his arm. “Let’s get you another drink.”

Thus begins their first night as a “couple.” If they’re going to sell it, they have to speed past everything that gets you to this level of comfort. They have to pretend they’ve had all the firsts and all the fights. They have to pretend they know each other well enough to laugh at each other’s dance moves, cut each other off at the bar, argue over which movie to see tomorrow. They have to pretend they’re comfortable enough with each other to be _mean_ , even. Dominic’s “You’re _just_ like your mother,” has her laughing so hard that she nearly chokes.

“Aw, honey, look,” he says, pulling her gently by the elbow as they look at the evening’s menu. “Chicken Cordon Bleu… don’t you remember that little place in Nice? The one where we got caught in the rain?”

“Oh, I do!” Mal giggles. “You were soaked! And you ordered that awful beer—”

“—and your shoes got ruined—”

“Right! Oh,” she sighs, “the navy ones… I still miss them.”

Chuck is up at the bar again now, though he’s looking completely defeated. Mallorie almost feels _sorry_ for him… Who could let a stranger ruin their night this way? But, even if he does look rather pitiful, Mallorie can’t help keeping the game up.

“And then when we were in Hamburg that summer, and those policemen wouldn’t stop laughing at your German—”

“They were overreacting,” Dominic argues, nose crinkled like he suddenly remembers being mocked in great detail. “My German isn’t so bad—”

“It’s _horrible_ , my love…”

She has to laugh as Dom’s face goes tight, practically indignant. Still, there’s a flicker of deviousness. “Hamburg,” he begins, sounding almost _predatory,_ and speaking a little more loudly than before. “Isn’t that where you got _diarrhea_ in the train station bathroom?”

Mallorie’s eyes water as gin and tonic and lime juice come streaming through her nose. She coughs and sputters and can’t stop laughing as Dominic hands her a stack of cocktail napkins. He’s red-faced, like he knows how risky it was to share this crass “memory” with a woman he barely knows, but he’s visibly pleased with himself all the same.

At this, Chuck retreats, sullen. Mallorie pays him little mind. She’s having too much fun.

They spend a few extra minutes at the bar while she puts Dominic through the ringer to guess which brand of gin she prefers best, and then vodka just to make him sweat. She catches her father's eye from across the hall and he’s smiling at her, that conciliatory sort of smile he’s smiled at her since she was two years old and he realized she’d never be anything but the very apex of herself.

“So,” she says to Dom, quietly. “You must tell me where this man has been hiding.”

Dom looks around. “I don’t see him, actually.” She realizes he thinks she’s talking about Chuck. “Maybe he left?”

She giggles. “No, not _that_ man — _t_ _his_ man,” she explains, and gestures broadly to Dom. “I haven’t even been able to get you to look at me since that day on the bridge.”

Suddenly, he’s nervous. She can tell. She can _smell it on him_. “I just—” he tries to lie.

“And tell me the truth,” she says, menacingly, threateningly, but still with all her charm. “I know it wasn’t my father,” she adds.

“Well,” he answers, rolling his eyes around indecisively. “You’re right and you’re wrong.”

“ _So_ profound,” she teases.

He makes a face at her before continuing. “It wasn’t anything like… what I think you might be thinking… It wasn’t one of those _boss’s-daughter-is-off-limits_ kind of things.”

“Then what?” she asks, knowing full well he was going to continue anyway, but feeling too stubborn to let him soliloquize uninterrupted.

“Okay, well, it _was_ something your father said,” he admits. “It’s… He told me you can see through anybody. I saw your photo, and he saw me see it, I guess, and he said, ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ And I nodded, like an idiot. And he told me, ‘Just know she can see through anyone and anything.’”

She smiles thinking of her father saying that. He does know her so well. “That’s all?” she has to ask.

Dom pouts. “Well, it was scary!”

She busts out a “Ha!” at that. “My father? _Scary?_ ” she implores.

He rolls his eyes. “Of course not. _You,_  Mal. You’re _terrifying_ , don’t you know that?”

She smiles, wicked. “Naturally, _I_ know. I just thought _you_ knew already, the way you looked _back_ at me on the bridge like that.”

“Well,” Dom says, looking slightly more confident again. “You called my bluff, I guess.” She grins at him, feeling somewhat victorious. “But you’re faking it too,” he adds, and it’s extra-accusatory in the light of that somewhat-victorious reaction.

“Faking what?” she demands.

“The whole terrifying, devil-may-care thing you’ve got going on?” Dom prompts.

She laughs. “Oh, you think that’s fake? Maybe I’m just a wicked, heartless thing.”

He laughs right back. “Oh yeah? A man-eater?”

She nods. “Yes, that’s right,” she answers.

He grins. “That would not surprise me,” he admits, “ _but_.”

“But?”

“But I just don’t buy it. You care too much.”

“Oh?”

He squints at her. “You think just because I wouldn’t look at you I didn’t notice you staring, and staring, and _staring_??” She might blush. “ _You_ are not as cool as you pretend to be,” he dares to say.

She wrinkles her nose, frustrated at how _un_ angry she is at being talked to this way. “Usually I am,” she tries to defend herself.

“And?”

She licks her lips. “Usually, people don’t stare back.”

 

 

\--- 

 

 

The night goes on, and the crowd dwindles, and Dominic gives up entirely on business. They spend the night pretending, long after Chuck has left, long past the point of necessity. They've built a whole history between them in just a few hours. Mallorie has barely stopped smiling. It's undoubtedly the best time she's ever had at one of her father's swanky events. But for all she's enjoyed it, even she has her limits. Her feet are beginning to hurt in her heels, and sitting up straight in her dress is becoming exhausting, and the thought of trading in a bar stool for her sofa at home is pure _heaven_.

So, she gives Dominic her ticket for the coat check and lingers near the bar, slurping at the last watery sips of gin in her glass among the nearly-melted ice. 

Miles notices her and excuses himself from a group of people, all standing and chatting. He approaches her and she instinctively tries to stand up a bit straighter.

“Successful evening?” Mallorie asks him.

“Oh, a few promising candidates, perhaps,” he says. “But of course, I was distracted by all the gossip.”

“Gossip?”

“Haven’t you heard? The very latest in speculation is that my daughter will be marrying my teaching assistant soon enough.”

Mallorie snorts. “Teaching assistant,” she teases.

Miles rolls his eyes. “Well, yes, officially,” he says.  “What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Oh, don’t worry. One of your graduate students wouldn’t leave me alone and Dominic kindly helped me to stave him off.”

“I’ve never known you to need help staving anybody off,” her father points out.

“He was very close by. It was convenient,” she says.

Her father only laughs. “He’s really gotten under your skin, hasn’t he?”

“Oh, please. I’ve forgotten him already! I’m sure he found someone else to bother.”

“I meant _Dom_.”

Mallorie has no response to this. She can’t lie; her father would see right through it. Luckily, Dominic walks over, their coats over his arm.

“Will you be taking my daughter home, then?” Miles asks Dom, and Mal snorts again at the brief look of panic on Dom’s face.

“Her home,” Dominic manages feebly. “I mean, I wasn’t—”

“Poor choice of words,” Miles admits, laughing to himself. “I’m just happy somebody will be watching out for her.”

Dom shakes Miles’ hand and smiles. Mallorie hugs her father and catches her mother’s eye watching them with something verging on distaste.

“I don’t think Maman is happy that I’m leaving so early,” she comments. “Or maybe it’s just all the gin.” She turns to Dominic. “I swear, she never gets upset when I’m drunk on wine…”

Miles laughs. Dom says, “I think it’s me. I don’t think she likes me.”

Miles helps Mal into her coat. “Oh, that’s alright. She didn’t always like me,” he tells Dom, who looks grateful for it. "Get home safe," he adds, and kisses Mallorie on the cheek. Then, he's beckoned back by a colleague, and Mal and Dom wander to the exit and out into the night.

 

\---

 

It's certainly not a warm evening, but still, they walk, tipsy enough to brace themselves against the chill. They talk about nothing in particular, whatever catches their eye or comes to mind. It’s pleasant and fluid and effortless, and Mallorie isn’t sure when they started holding hands.

“So, did you hear?” Mallorie asks suddenly, when they’re a block away from her building. “Apparently we are the subject of a fair bit of gossip.”

“Oh really?” Dom asks, one eyebrow raised in intrigue. “What’s the word, then?”

“Oh,” Mal begins casually. “Just that we’re madly in love and sure to be married sometime soon.”

Dom _tsk-tsks_. “They’ll all be awfully disappointed if that doesn’t come to fruition.”

She bites her lip and looks down at the sidewalk, wondering whether the gin has her too hopeful, or if Dom did really carefully choose the word _if._

They’re quiet until they reach her doorstep, and then, they’re quiet some more.

She wants to wait for Dominic to speak first, but she must admit he’s been awfully brave tonight, and instead she decides not to beat around the bush.

“If I’d have known there was a chance you’d be walking me home tonight, I might not have plied myself with so much alcohol,” she says quietly, not quite looking at him. “It might be for the best, really, or I’d have no excuse not to invite you upstairs.”

She looks up at him then, and his face is soft, and honest, and serene. “Next time, then,” he says quietly, taking a half step toward her. She takes a step closer as well and closes the distance between them.

“Next time,” she agrees. “You’ll look at me the next time you see me, won’t you?” she asks. She hopes it doesn’t come out as desperate as it makes her feel to say it.

Dom nods, and tips his forehead against hers. “Mm-hmm,” he hums. “You’ll look at me, and I’ll look back at you. And I’ll tell you all about the weekend we spent camping under the stars in the country.”

“I remember,” she almost whispers, smiling too wide. “By the little river…”

“And all the mountains in the distance,” Dom adds.

“Huddling close by the fire,” Mal goes on, wistfully. Somehow they’ve got their arms wrapped around each other now, and her head is pressed against his shoulder.

She feels Dom’s breath on the top of her head. “I never wanted to let you go,” he’s saying as he lets go of her. He takes a long look at her, like he’s worried he could go blind tomorrow. “Goodnight, Mal,” he says.

Mallorie can’t help leaning in and kissing him, not quite on his lips, not quite on his cheek, but on the very corner of his mouth. It’s there and then it’s gone, and she has to turn and let herself inside before she can really look at him again, while she still has the strength to go to bed alone.

She does go to bed. Part of her wants to stay up and reminisce about the night until the sun rises, but so much gin and walking and smiling has made her eyelids heavy, the inside of her mind swimming, floating gently, or is she sinking?

She only has to sit down on the edge of her bed to take her shoes off before she’s slumping back slowly, the dreamy dark starting to fog her vision. She fights it a little bit. Then, she pulls herself tiredly to her pillow and lies on her stomach, her left hand feeling lazily around her nightstand, her fingers finally closing around the small, metal top that lives there as she drifts to sleep.


End file.
